The Boy and His Friends
by Aiko Isari
Summary: 01 AU. In which a boy befriends a ghost, a dinosaur, a cat, and a girl, all in that order.
1. Chapter 1

_Warning for miscarriage from the eyes of a toddler._

* * *

 _Part One: The Boy and the Ghost_

Taichi is almost four.

He touches everything he can. He falls over a lot. He loves clouds and stars. He loves to wake up early for soccer.

His mother is getting round.

He doesn't know why that's good, because she's also sick sometimes, but his father says that that is okay, and Taichi agrees because it must be okay if his daddy says so.

Then, some time later, his parents say he will have a little sibling.

It must be good, because his parents are happy, but he's not sure if he wants there to be little things around. He is supposed to be the littlest thing here, except for Miko the kitten.

But it might be okay. Mommy and daddy think everything is okay. They must be right.

* * *

It takes some work, and a lot of squinting, but Taichi finds out what a sibling is, what a little one is.

That makes him happy. Because there being a new little one means he will be the bigger one, and to be the bigger one means he will be able to do many more things. That sounds fine to him.

His mother is getting rounder. It seems like it's creeping up very fast, but he is four now and that apparently is not so much time at all.

When he asks what his sibling looks like, mommy says they are an alien and hard to explain.

Aren't aliens bad?

* * *

Taichi is four and a quarter, for real.

Everything seems okay.

Miko is bigger. Too big. She won't stay on his head anymore. Though she actually hates his head apparently.

His parents have started doing things with money, and using smelly markers that make his nose twitch. He goes outside to play and they're fine with it. He is fine.

He comes home and his home is dark. Something is scribbled, something he can't really read. He takes a guess, because his mother's roundness has started slowing down. The sibling must be happening.

There's a sandwich for him under plastic wrap. He waits to eat it and watch tv.

He falls asleep with it uneaten and wakes up for it. They still are not home by the time he really goes to bed.

* * *

There is no sibling.

Taichi doesn't ask why. One would think he would, but things are not okay. When they are okay, maybe he will ask, but the sibling went with the roundness so something bad must have happened.

They are not okay.

He feels like he's being watched sometimes. If he turns and looks at it, he'll get in trouble. _Nothing's there._ Though saying that makes his mom cry.

Taichi goes to stay with his grandpa.

While he's there, he's being watched. He says so because it's safer here.

Grandpa gives him his goggles to protect him.

They do the opposite. He sees her.

* * *

The ghost looks like a tiny version of his mom.

She doesn't talk much but maybe it's because she's tiny. Maybe it's because she's so young. Maybe she doesn't know how.

So he talks to her, for a while. A while turns into any free day, and there aren't many.

Her name, she tells him when she can talk, is Hikari.

He can't talk to her after that for a while. For some reason, it hurts.

It doesn't last. She's company and noise in a house that is trying to forget sound. So he clings to it, even when his parents start to worry. They have nothing to worry about. Really!

* * *

 _ **A/N:** _ This is a little four chapter thingy that came to me the other night because I don't think I torture Taichi enough. Enjoy!

Challenges: Ultimate Sleuth Red Quest 1, and Diversity Writing E15, write a fic with no dialogue


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two: The Boy and the Dinosaur

Taichi is seven. He's been to a single therapy session. The man likes him. Doesn't think there's anything wrong with him, says he'll grow out of his fantasies soon enough. These aren't fantasies, though. His dead sister isn't a fantasy. She simply is. He can't explain it, doesn't want to, really. This, this vision, is his. He wants to keep it for himself. Not even _Sora_ can know, and they're as best of friends as friends can best.

Still, one night, he thinks he should tell. Because Hikari is strange.

Maybe it's because she's never been alive, but she does things living people don't, like hang upside down for long periods of time, or not sleep. She asks questions and then looks them up in books after asking questions anyway. He usually has to be told to do that.

Or tonight, where his bladder's run rampant and he's not noticing his dad's computer room is unlocked and Hikari is standing there until it's too late. She's standing, dressed in pajamas she might have worn. She looks at him and sometimes what are brown eyes are the color of a dark room. That's the color they are now and she points forward. He moves closer. She doesn't try to wake them up most of the time, despite never sleeping that he's ever seen. When she does make any kind of fuss though, it's important.

So he goes into the room and the screen has a flood of zeroes and ones and they're starting to bubble out like the world's biggest and ugliest pimple.

The next thing he knows, he has an egg the size of a chair in his bed with him and he really doesn't want to lose it for some reason.

Or cook it. He knows how to make eggs now. He doesn't want them today.

* * *

The weird thing just keeps growing. And growing. It even likes Miko's cat food, and that stuff smells like donkey hooves and super glue. He makes a face at it.

It's really funny to see Miko go after it though.

Hikari doesn't seem as interested as it was when it was happening and special. She almost seems kind of disappointed, honestly. Mama would say he was the exact same way, all while looking at him funny, that same kind of funny that had him talk to the doctors not too long ago.

Still, the thing is nice. It might have a name but they don't really know.

What Taichi figures out is, well, eggs that come out of computer get super huge in the same amount of time it took to grow his hair.

He loses his pink blog and gains a yellow dinosaur in under twelve hours.

Neat.

Well, it's neat until it blows up his room anyway.

* * *

He ends up in the middle of the street. Hikari doesn't insist or anything, she just follows because now it's interesting again. That's his guess. She hasn't made any noise since the egg hatched, since before the egg hatched.

So he follows himself and a bridge almost falls on him.

Hikari cries for the first time ever in life and he feels bad. He can't explain why he feels bad, but he does.

Maybe it's because the dinosaur whose name he never got to know is cring too. But he's crying for a different reason, one less gentle and warm.

One less scary.

But the light happens and it comes and for a moment he thinks it will take him away from everything he's ever known and loved and that is not allowed.

So he doesn't go. But Hikari almost does. So he tugs and tugs and tugs and for a moment she's real right beside him and-

She's gone. This time it might really be forever too.


	3. Chapter 3

_Part Three: The Boy and the Cat_

Summer camp.

Taichi loves the noise from the second he gets off the bus. He's off and running and nearly forgets his luggage on the way down. His goggles. They won't stop bouncing. He can't stop.

He's an eleven year old boy, he needs the noise. His house is not loud enough without someone to talk to anymore and his parents are parents. No one wants to talk to their mom all day right?

He spends his day setting up tents (there's a little kid and his tent, along with Yamato, and Koushiro too, which is fine. They're in the same club after all.) and hanging in a tree. He wanders around and collects little things for the shrine he keeps tucked in a drawer. When he finally goes to bed after chatting with Sora over canned tuna salad, everything is peaceful. He doesn't spend hours staring up at a ceiling that won't break.

He wakes up that night to something sharp at the softest part of his neck. Taichi freezes, until a soft voice orders him to move. He obeys because he's not all ridiculousness. The thing sits at his shoulders, weapon pressed still. In the light of the dying flames outside, Taichi manages to see black gleaming claws. He hopes they're claws. He's led out, past the fire, past the teacher on duty, marched up to the shrine. They don't seem to notice him.

(Are they dead? He doesn't know.)

It's starting to snow.

There are no lights this far in the forest.

He could die here.

Taichi doesn't squirm. He wants to. Then he hears footsteps behind him. The footsteps are too small to be adults, or monsters like that day. He's forced to look forward too, towards a strange light by the shrine.

In the darkness, there's a girl, and she glows silver.

Hikari. Light.

She smiles at him.

Then, he knows nothing., except a too heavy pain in his spine and neck.

* * *

Taichi wakes up to those claws at his neck again, but they're less inclined towards scraping at his throat. In fact they seem to be there for the sake of convenience. Her breathing is slow and even and despite being on what is likely the forest floor, he can't find it in himself to move either.

Eventually, he has to, but the cat doesn't wake. She sleeps on, white and purple tail twitching once in a while.

Hikari is sitting on his left. She's older, and ghosts don't age. Yet, that's just what everyone says, but it's happened before his eyes. It's probably for his own sake. She regards him and gestures sadly to the cat.

What could have been, he realizes. What could have been was a happy girl with a sad cat for a friend. What could he have been? Taichi isn't sure why he knows this but he does.

His dead sister holds out a hand to him and points ahead with her other small fingers. Help them. Help them.

Taichi's fingers pass through hers, but it's enough. The cat stirs and as the sun rises, Taichi looks out and out and out into a strange, brand new world.

His body thrums. Something glows on his belt.

Taichi gets up and starts walking, carrying the cat as he goes. Hikari floats beside him.

For some reason, Taichi is absolutely certain that he can take on the world.

* * *

Unfortunately, he can't quite take on this cat. She hisses every time he picks her up without warning. She scratches him whenever he treats her like Miko. She growls and yips and catches her own fish and yet steals his lap every night.

She flinches whenever he moves his hands.

Taichi doesn't know what to make of her. Still, he keeps her close. What's one more pet?

What's one more friend?

He thinks it makes Hikari smile too, even if the others don't understand their bad combination.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** You know I didn't think this would get that much attention. It might need a sequel after all. What do you guys think?


	4. Chapter 4

_Part Four: The Boy and the Girl_

Taichi knows he shouldn't wander about the woods at night, away from his friends. That's a rule from Earth. It's gotta stick around in the Digital World, right? Then again, Taichi's broken plenty of rules before and never fussed about it. That certainly isn't going to change now is it?

At least Tailmon always comes with him. Sometimes it's reluctantly, but more and more she's willing to lay over his shoulder or on his hair (especially since that annoys him). But she listens about, the ring on her tail somehow completely silent.

She talks more than Hikari, which isn't saying much.

Okay, it's really not saying much.

Taichi goes out every night, gets looks from whomever is awake, usually Yamato. Taichi has to wonder if Yamato intends to fuse his brother into his own side, for how close he keeps him. He can't really talk, though. He doesn't have a living sibling, just a friendly ghost only he can see.

That's the definition of 'seeing things' and 'needing help'. Not that he'd ever ask.

Taichi spends these walks looking at the stars and making new constellations or thinking out loud. Sometimes, if Hikari's there, he talks to her and she listens. Her head's tilted at its usual inhuman angle and she looks very interested but that's about all. She still won't tell him why they're there or how to go home.

She tends to leave faster when he asks so he stops asking. He's sure he'll find out anyway.

Tonight, though, tonight she's ahead of him, looking ahead, leading him. She usually leads him back, not forward, so this must be important, this must be the most important. She leads him far, far away from camp, from the lake. Towards another light. Towards a very big light that they should have seen but hadn't. Tailmon's tail lashes the faster Taichi walks, but he can't help that. It's not like she can't outrun him if she tries.

It's probably jostling something. He doesn't slow down. Slow's not his forte, admittedly.

Hikari stops and points, her small finger directed towards the middle of the river.

He gets it, he gets it because it's Hikari and she always guides him forward. Taichi launches himself forward and up and a girl falls right into his arms.

He hits the water with an ungainly splash and yelps of pain.

Hikari laughs.

Tailmon shakes her ears free of water and scowls, only to have to leap aside from another falling cat.

And like that, just like that, Taichi feels his world change yet again. Once again, he doesn't know what it will be. He does know he's just missing one friend, one dinosaur.

Once he finds him, everything will work out. He knows it.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_ ** And that's the end! Thank you for all of the support for this fic everyone. Please look forward to the eventual sequel, _darwin's law._ Thanks everybody!


End file.
